Tobacco farmers disrupted an auction on the first day of Zimbabwe’s marketing season yesterday, as prices for the country’s biggest agricultural export plunged.
Sales were halted temporarily at the Boka Tobacco Auction Floors in Harare. Police arrived at the auction house to monitor and control the protest.
The average price offered by merchants was $3.50 (R41) a kilogram, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board said in a statement posted at the auction house.
That was 28 percent lower than the first day of the season last year, when the average was $4.85. “We were expecting $4.99 a kilogram,” Luckmore Mandlazi, a farmer, said.
Bloomberg